Such A Selfish Wish
by WaltzMatildah
Summary: Draws from the rampant speculation about the vampire-is-also-a-werewolf reveal in episode 2x19, 'Klaus'. Damon and Klaus following Klaus' successful attempt to break the curse.


**Such A Selfish Wish**

by Waltzmatildah

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As the early morning sun begins its heavy ascent into daytime, he sleeps. Curls into and onto himself crudely in a desperate attempt to retain degrees fahrenheit of heat that slowly leaches from his fingertips and into the solid earth below. A failed and failing attempt to stave off the inevitable return to cold blood.

The twelve hours just past? They have wreaked a physical toll that is unprecedented. Almost two centuries worth of seconds and minutes and hours and this? This is almost more than he can come to bear.

He is naked. Both literally and figuratively. Exposed in all the ways that count the very most.

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His rise to consciousness is startling; sudden. Brings with it an agony that buries a path to his core.

The ground beneath him his tacky slick with life-blood. A perpetual stain on the decaying leaf matter that carpets the forest floor. He does not need to _taste_ it to know that it had belonged to him once. Pushes his fingers into the sodden mess and tries not to think too hard about the fact that it had belonged to someone else before that.

He hears a noise then. An impatient cough. Blurs to upright, more or less. It takes more time than it really should. Ignites fresh agonies that echo all the way to his toes.

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A vague mirage appears to his left. A figure. It is slumped casually, knees bent and tearing a large leaf slowly to strips and shreds; distracted. As though waiting for this moment to arrive for hours.

He notes the irridescent glow of a lingering sunset and considers, briefly, the possibility that the figure has been doing just that.

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"Where am I?"

There are thousands of questions, fragmented and fogging at his sluggish synapses. Develop only to half-way formed before a new one takes its place in the queue. He figures this one slips past chapped lips because its potential responses are not ones that terrify him to frozen solid.

_Elena. Stefan. Andie. Katherine..._

He gags then. Expels blackened blood clots and bile that strips his throat and tongue to red-raw; acid-like.

"Easy there, tiger..."

The voice is mocking. Hides within its delicate tone more than just the semblance of a laugh.

"If being unprepared for the events of the last twelve hours means this-" The blurred figure gestures expansively in his direction, "Then I'm suddenly very glad it took me centuries to plan for it."

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The last vestiges of confusion and fog lift in that moment, and he's on his knees, hunched. Fingers wrap around the other man's throat, press against a pulse point that barely bothers to register the impending threat.

_"What did you do to me?"_

Defeated fury.

The sound of his voice is foreign. He almost doesn't recognise himself. Almost relishes the notion of oblivion that the revelation brings.

He blinks and the man blurs out behind a salt water wall. His fingers are forcibly removed from their stranglehold and he falls back, instantly demolished in a fight he doesn't yet fully comprehend.

"Relax, Damon."

The man's mouth curls into the ghost of a grin. Delight, something vaguely resembling excitement.

It's all he can do to look away. To drag his gaze downward across the myriad slow healing cuts that marble his bare ankles. Bones that had, hours earlier, been snapped in two, have now healed, leave only the dull reminder of a throbbing agony.

Yet more evidence of his failings.

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A backpack lands at his feet then. Delivered with a cursory explanation; _Food and clothing. I expect you require both?_

Like a question he can't fully form answers to.

It is not only his skin that has been left to torn and bleeding after all.

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He fumbles at the zipper of the bag. Can't quite co-ordinate jelly-like limbs into something resembling deliberate motion. Hands close over his own. The ragged nails, caked in dirt, belie a degree of calm precision that is boiling at his insides.

"Allow me."

And so he does.

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He's dressed again. The starch stiffened clothing is not his own and for that he is glad.

His own skin is the enemy right now.

Something metal lands in the debris beside him. Catches in the dwindling remnants of filtered daylight.

His ring.

He regards it cautiously. Can't quite put all the pieces together into something that fits. Into something that makes a modicum of sense.

"Life goes on, Damon. You'll be needing that tomorrow..."

The implication, more than clear. He slides the band of metal back into place on his finger. The weight of it oddly familiar amid a time when nothing is as it seems.

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His jaw aches with the fierce need to feed.

He remembers agony. And an all encompassing rage that blacked out his vision to a midnight ink. Struggles to remember very little else.

A lie.

He thinks he remembers it all.

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"Klaus."

The sound of the word, breathy, rolls around in the back of his head. Fills his empty spaces with a degree of horror he thought he'd long since left behind. They're both standing now, and he's rigid with tension, with residual pain.

"You and I, Damon? We have some extraordinary coincidences in common." He flinches at the words. At all the possible implications hidden within them.

"I need to find my brother." The suffocating desire suddenly an insistent _need_ that threatens to send him back to his knees.

"Ah yes," Klaus laughs. Genuine and rare. A paradox of sorts. "About that whole _brother_ thing..."

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The End


End file.
